


The Master's Angel

by maurinejt



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Gallifrey, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-08
Updated: 2019-01-08
Packaged: 2019-10-06 22:15:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 17
Words: 17,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17353619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maurinejt/pseuds/maurinejt
Summary: After the trials of Season 10, (detailed in Missy’s Vault) and his adventures on The Colony Ship, the Master now faces his first solo challenge in his new incarnation: A dire threat to his adopted domain.  This time, the menace is personal and is tied to the deepest mysteries on Gallifrey.  New friends are made and old revisited as the Master must decide where he stands.





	1. Chapter 1

There was a spectacular sizzle and the center screen crackled with static.

The Master looked up, annoyed.  He had been doing a brilliant reconstruction of a jaw and nose for his adoring billion-plus audience in their daily foray into the new world of event surgery.  Now, much of his delicate exhibition was lost; interrupted by this…frightened face. 

He straightened with something approaching interest. “Finish up,” he instructed his surgical assistants, and tore off his gloves. 

The man on the screen wore a flight suit and displays lit the background.  He must be in some sort of shuttle—

“You have to help me.  Master.”

The telltale signs of terror were magnified a hundred times on the enlarged image: dilated pupils, visible sweat, extended nostrils.   

“They’re coming, I can’t start. They sapped the power.  I can’t lift off. There are so many of them, they’re _everywhere_.”

“Is this live?”  The Master asked a tech.

“Yes, there’s a slight delay because it’s beamed from an outer system—"

The Master scanned the picture as the frightened man continued to panic onscreen.  A smudged object in the background near a live-stream graph of fuel reserves caught his attention.  He couldn’t quite make it out.

“They’ve taken over this whole planet, there’s no one left but them,” the man continued, his voice jerking in agitation.

The Master walked closer to the monitor, what was that thing?  It was familiar, but he couldn’t place it; it wasn’t clear enough—

“What do I do?  Please.  _What do I_ _do_?”

Was that mystery object alive?  It wasn’t by the graph anymore, it was beside the gauges….

The Master realized what he was seeing.

“Turn it off!” He shouted.  “End transmission!  Now!”

The line was cut.  The screen went black.  The Master thanked the universe that he must still show enough teeth--even in this new, jovial persona--to be obeyed instantly. 

“What planet did it come from?” he demanded.

“Ortes, Sir,” A cameramen answered, afraid.  “It’s one of our farthest colonies but an important source of zirconium.  I think…that was the supply pilot.”

The Master took a deep breath.  “When was the last time we heard from them?”

“I’m sorry?”

He grabbed the man’s tunic and doubled it up in his fist, almost lifting the hapless technician.  “When was the last time, before this one, did we receive communication from Ortes?”

“I…I…don’t…”

“Find out,” The Master said.  His eyes were still on the blank monitor.  Long minutes passed.

“You,” he snapped his fingers at an orderly, without looking away.  “You keep your eyes on that screen.  And,” he yanked another over.  “Take turns, count out loud to ten.  Someone must watch at all times until I can make sure it didn’t come through.  _Without a single blink_ , do you understand?  Or we’re all dead.”

“What came through?” squeaked the very young orderly he had just grabbed.

“I don’t hear counting!” If he could have set the kid on fire through his touch, he would have.

“One, two, three,” The boy started, quaking.

“And don’t you dare cry, we can’t afford the blink.  You,” he clapped a hand on another shoulder, finally able to look elsewhere.  “As soon as he reaches ten, he rests and you start. Count to ten while you stare at it.”  He turned to the cameraman.  “Get as many people as you can in a line.  Each person stares for the count of ten, then it passes to the next.  Then the next.   You stop only when I tell you to.  Not a second before.  Do you get it?  Do you understand?  One blink, and it’s over.  They will _be_ here.”

“Ten each, no blinking. Yes.”  The cameraman sounded petrified.

If the situation wasn’t so dire, he’d enjoy this.

Oh well.  He threw open the doors to his media relay station, the room that kept the live feed bouncing through solar systems.

“I need to examine the physical record of that transmission. Then, you destroy the tape.”

“What is it?” asked one of the techs, aghast.

“There was a Weeping Angel on that aircraft.”

 

The image of an angel becomes an angel.

 

#

 

The next few hours were a blur of activity.  The terrified line chanting to ten in front of the monitor saw nothing.  The Master studied the wavelengths of the transmission itself and found no hidden images.  He felt drained with relief, he must have gotten it terminated in time.  Maybe he even took the thing out, the molecules that used to be an Angel floating in the void of space, frozen from the transfer when he cut it.  One could dream.

For now, their little node was safe, the hub of his worshipping masses untouched.

The last normal communication from Ortes had been three hours prior.  A routine update on mine production, and the rotation of off-world workers.

Three hours.

There was a colony of Angels out there who had taken over one of _his_ worlds with incredible speed.  They had settled on _his_ planet.  He didn’t know why.  Supposedly, they only existed to feed.  They might help each other or work together for a common goal; there were documented instances of both.  But they had no ambition as a species, except access to a ready food source and a comfortable existence.

This felt different.  He didn’t think they were going to stay confined on one planet for long. 

If Angels were ready to take on the universe, then the universe had better look out.  Especially since he knew what they really were.

At least, he knew where to start looking.

The question was, was he going to?


	2. Chapter 2

The carver sculpted the inner curve of the thumb. 

He forgot the world outside his studio, the lightning that flashed through the thick glass, the constant storms that buffeted his abode.  He worked better under the gloom of light through heavy clouds, so he picked a planet where that was always the case.

This was not work, though; this was how he relaxed from work. This was art. Instead of frustration leading to despair which led to more frustration, he created beauty.

The grace of the hands as they lay gently against the cheek moved him. The precision laser sang as he discovered minute folds in the crooks of the curved digits of his creation. He wished he could dive into the essence of the figure and transform into something that graceful, that pure.  This was as close as he got.

A loud, atonal buzz made him jump. 

He sliced off a marble finger and swore.

Grumbling, he lay down his instrument and wandered over to a nearby table.  Papers, chunks of marble, several lathes, a weird metal corkscrew and a half-dozen polishing cloths were tossed to the floor.  He let out a grunt of triumph as he found what he was looking for underneath all the debris.   It resembled a sort of paperweight, made up of dials wound together.  He turned the largest one forty-five degrees.

At once, he was standing again before his nearly finished statue, making incisions with his laser.  This time, he shut off the instrument right before the buzzer sounded.  The previously cut-off finger remained whole and perfect. He smiled briefly, followed by annoyance at the necessity for the whole maneuver.

“What, what!”

The buzzer was his proximity alarm.  There was a pounding at the glass in the adjoining foyer.  Outside.  Whoever was out there would shortly be pulverized by the storm. 

Well, all he needed to do was wait, then.

He heard a wall sliding back.  He cursed the fact his dwelling wasn’t completely sealed.  But there were times he couldn’t move his machine because his experiments were in too delicate a stage to handle the ambient energy, and he did need occasional supplies.  “Rassa!” he yelled and stalked to the foyer.

A middle-aged woman stood there, eyes fastened on the outside storm which was taking full advantage of the sudden invite in.  Her black hair streaked with grey blew around her as the wind howled.  Together they watched as a person, the one who evidently did the pounding, fell through the opening across the polished floor.  The blast of cold lingered even after the transparent panel shut automatically behind him.

“I’ve given orders about being disturbed,” the carver reminded Rassa.

“Look, Alchemist,” she pointed.

An elegant script of swirling circles had been drawn with a finger in the heavy frost coating the side of the panel-window exposed to the elements.

It read: “Let me in, Time Lord.”  It had to be written backwards, so it could be read properly through the glass.  The carver couldn’t help but be a bit impressed. “They’re bothering me here?  Can’t they give it a rest?”

“He’s quite young.  I believe he came alone.”

 “I don’t suppose you could accidently shove him down the mountainside?”

“If there was an inquiry, it would look a bit suspicious,” the woman replied primly.

They stared at the young man sprawled on the floor.  He was barely a teen, olive skin and wavy black hair with an upturned nose.

“My dear,” sighed the Alchemist.  “You need to cultivate more of a sense of the appropriate.  Sometimes what seems like the right thing to do, is not the best thing.”

Rassa raised an eyebrow at him.

The Alchemist gave up. “Put him in a spare room, make him comfortable.  Does he need medical attention?”

Rassa closed her eyes and set her hand on his forehead.  Then she opened them.  “His body temperature is low from exposure.  That tunic he’s wearing is useless against the elements, even for short periods.  He needs rest and warmth.  That’s all.”

“Well, give it to him.  That’s a handy talent, Rassa, that not many have.  You should be learning from a healer, not stuck here with a withered old scientist who scarcely talks.”

“I’ve spent plenty of time with healers,” she shrugged.  “I need to know what you can teach me.”

“I wish I knew it myself.”

“I don’t mind finding it together.”

“Well,” he smiled at her.  “You are a help.”  He patted her absently on the shoulder as he retraced his steps to the studio, back to the beckoning marble hands.

Rassa watched him go.  Then, she kicked at the prone figure.

“Who are you and what are you doing here,” she demanded.

The Master opened his eyes.  “I’m here to learn.”

“You’re too late.  I was here first.”

“Interesting,” The Master propped himself up on one elbow.  He added up the remote location, the lack of personnel, what he had encountered of the layout during his sojourn outside while searching for an entrance and made a guess.  He hoped he was right.  “I was under the impression that the Alchemist’s work was secret.  And it skirts the edge of forbidden.”

She tucked a piece of salt and pepper hair behind her ear, reevaluating this stranger.  “Let’s start again.  I’m Rassa.  I’m the Alchemist’s apprentice.  Who in the vortex are you?”

The Master had prepared for a moment like this, if not it exactly.  “In this incarnation, I am the Student,” he lied.

“Right, because _that’s_ a real name.”  Her dark eyes went well with sarcasm.

The Master gave her the most guileless expression in his repertoire.  “Right at this moment, it’s accurate.  Whatever name I had before doesn’t matter.”

“We’ll see,” Rassa replied tartly.  “All right, _Student_ , I’ll take you to your quarters.”


	3. Chapter 3

“The Alchemist has his breakfast at this time.  Take it to him and don’t say anything.”  Rassa poured tea into a ceramic cup on a tray, then placed a krumpt beside it with a silver utensil and thick cloth napkin.  “Pay attention to where these items are kept, you’ll do it by yourself tomorrow.”

The Master’s mouth watered.  He hadn’t seen a krumpt since Gallifrey.  How—

“We make them,” Rassa told him crisply.

Krumpts traditionally took ten days to cure the dough alone; then came the rises.  The icing was made from cultivated crystals, infused with three types of wildflowers.  That process took longer than the pastry.  Plus, the eight kinds of filling, two of them fermented.  About a month of work sat deliciously on the plate.  Then there was the _tea_.

“My, he doesn’t want for anything, does he?” the Master marveled.

“No.” 

Not wanting to spill a drop of the precious elixir made from leaves harvested for a month each decade that only grew on the top of Mount Perdition, he entered the studio with extreme care.  He scanned for somewhere to set the tray down--

\--and dropped it from nerveless fingers.  It shattered into a million pieces.  The tea splattered against the dusty floor and the krumpt rolled under a worktable.

The Master didn’t notice.   He stared.  He didn’t blink.

“What?” the Alchemist turned around, glaring at the interruption.

“Master,” his name sounded strange in reference to someone else.  “Don’t move.  Don’t blink.  You’re in danger.”

The elder snorted.  “Don’t be daft.  Do you think you can come in again and hold on to the damn tray this time?”

The Master’s mouth opened.  The Angels crowded the room, hiding behind their hands, waiting to attack.

But they didn’t.

The blurring of time distortion moved the air and the composed tray was again in his hands as he found himself reentering.

The Angels were still there, but this time he set the tray down gently on the only clear surface.

“Your tea.”

“Thank you.”

“The Angels,” the Master began, not sure where he was going with this one.

“I suppose they are startling if surprised,” the Alchemist conceded.

These angels, the Master realized, were not alive.

Yet, added a dread voice in his head.


	4. Chapter 4

The Alchemist ran a critical eye over the heap of rocks assembled in the workroom.  Pieces of a broken chair peeked out here and there.

The Master ached in places he didn’t even know he had, digging up slabs of quartz and granite, then lugging them in from outside through the ever-blowing storm to set on the tarp. 

Rassa laid out the tarp.  Her only other contribution was to break up the chair.  His glance at her bore a dart of venom.  If his name had been the Master, it would have fallen out a bit differently. But he was still the Student, in his baggy tunic and trousers, so faded you couldn’t tell what color it had been originally, sort of a purple-blue-brown.  Rassa ordered him in imperious tones to collect large rocks outside and he did as he was told.

“I need it tighter.” The Alchemist complained.  His apprentices scrambled to manhandle the stones so they fit closer together; using the broken chair to wedge in the larger gaps.

The device that sat on the side was unfamiliar to the Master.  It was a squat ebony column, standing three feet tall.  When the Alchemist twisted the top, it split lengthwise into four sections, leaving a substantial rod in the center behind.  He took one and set it down a short distance from the pile.  Rassa moved to grab two; the Master, the last.  The script carved into the section he carried told him to set down his piece “an equidistant remove” from both the “transformative object” which he assumed meant their nouveau rock sculpture, and the “sister pieces”.  Even Gallifreyan directions had to show off.

It meant that the columns formed a boundary; they were placed the same width apart as they were from the objects on the tarp, with the center rod making a fifth point.  Neat design.  And it was portable.  A further notation had him “rotate the energy port to strike the transformative object.”  He watched the other two maneuver theirs, then turned his so the thin vent that ran the length of it aimed toward the center.

The Alchemist returned to the rod and began twirling grooves notched in the surface.  “Stand back,” he warned his proteges and pressed the top with his palm.

The columns began to hum in harmony.

Violet light projected out from each one.  It beamed over the rocks and shards of wood until the whole pile started to glow.  The black tarp acted like a conductor, curving the energy underneath.

The Alchemist squinted as he scrutinized the phosphorescent mound, then fiddled with the command rod.

An unbearable grinding filled the air as the rocks began to push at each other, nestling closer, creating their own density.  The cracks between them smoothed and disappeared, acting almost like a liquid as it melded into a solid shape.  The air smelled like a quarry after a good rain.  The Master fought the urge to sneeze.

The individual bits of texture, color, and wood remained; but it had turned to a sedimentary, seamless mass.

The Alchemist rotated the grooves mere fractions this time.  The rays changed intensity, becoming so bright the Master had to close his eyes against it.  Then, with a powering down whirr, the machine shut itself off.  The beams of light vanished.

The ramshackle mound of rock and wood had turned into a perfect marble block.

The Master let out a low whistle of astonishment.

So that’s why his mentor was called the Alchemist.


	5. Chapter 5

“I feel like we’ve met before,” the Master told Rassa as they both went about tasks in the spacious, cheerful kitchen. 

“Why would we?”  She replied, up to her elbows in dough.

The Master paused to taste the fruit paste he was stirring.  His hearts raced faster with the overpowering sugar.

“Well, what did you used to do?” he asked.

“What did you?”  she countered.

“I’m the Student,” the Master said.  “I study.”

“A dangerous pastime,” noted Rassa, as she squeezed and slammed the dough on the board with extra force.  “Ignorant probing often leads to unintended peril.”

Well.  That was illuminating. 

“You’re here too,” he kept his tone bland, while he added some citric drops and continued to stir.

“I have a wide range of interests.  This one, I had yet to explore.”

The Master tilted his head.  “Is it hard for you?”

The woman’s concentration bent on her kneading.  “What do you mean?”

“You’re no more an apprentice than I am a tree.  So, what did you do in your other life?  Judge?  Mogul?  Were you a Chancellery Guard, because that would explain it.”  He tasted his paste again.  Better.  Maybe another drop.

“You must be older than you look.”

“Maybe I’m just a rash young Time Lord trying to appear worldly to impress a girl.  It happens.”

She laughed. “I’m a bit past “girl”.”

“Oh, I’m aware,” the Master packed as much wicked suggestion as possible into the sentence.

She seemed startled for a moment.  “You’re devilishly handsome, you know.  Yet somehow untried, and sweet.  The contradiction is…fascinating.”

Why did he blush at that?  Why?  He didn’t blush.  He did what he wanted and was embarrassed by nothing.  This was ridiculous.

He stared down at his very well-mixed paste, hoping she wouldn’t notice.

She rolled her dough up in a smooth ball with finality. Her eyes took on a mischievous glint.

“So.  If I say this dough is fully kneaded and ready for another rise, then we have at least two hours to fill however we want.  Would you be of age to come along and see what I had in mind?  Shame to waste such a beguiling form, no matter who is in there.”

Wait a minute.  That couldn’t be the invitation he thought it was…could it?  They were both adults and not married to each other.  Parts of his body turned electric at the thought, blood singing through arteries.  There was probably a reason Time Lords generally avoided regenerating to quite this young.

“Well past that age,” he managed.

She ran a dishcloth under the faucet, wrung it out and draped it over the ball, tucking down the edges.  Then she turned to him, a floury hand on her hip.

“Then, do you dare?” Rassa challenged, with a hint of a knowing smile.

He couldn’t even remember the last time this came up.  Well, two incarnations ago, he’d had that silly wife who almost killed him; it felt like eons.  He remembered how shocked and not a little hurt the Doctor had been when he found out about her. 

And with the thought of the Doctor, the Master no longer cared what was behind the girl’s grin. Perhaps he could forget the utter desolation of the slammed vault door when a visit was over, now amplified a thousand times because his friend was truly gone.

The Master held out his hand gallantly, like a courtier.  They glided off towards her quarters.

He was about to enter and stopped.  “I must ask for precautions,” he said the ritual words with courtesy.

“Of course,” she replied, in the same vein.  “I ask for yours.”

“Yes.”  He ducked so she wouldn’t see his face, but she’d turned away.  The past clawed hard enough to draw blood.  With the one person who mattered, he hadn’t bothered to ask.  Well after the point was moot, it was asked of him.  He only begrudgingly agreed and mocked the question.  Maybe he _had_ learned something in the lifetimes between then and now. 

After it was over and Rassa slept, her face smooth and inscrutable, a tear leaked out onto his cheek.  He cursed Missy.  She did it.  She _broke_ him.  But the irritation passed once he forced himself to be honest about the reason. 

It would never be the way it was with his best friend.  Even at the last, when he was smug in some sordid scheme and the Doctor could hardly stand him, it was still the echo of joy, the union of two souls so intrinsically bound they could never completely part no matter how much they tried…or how much they wanted to. And this was, what, a cure for boredom, for loneliness?  It wasn’t even close.

Time was he might have cut the girl’s throat to see her twists and gasps while crimson splashed the sheets. He would feel powerful then, and not wretched. 

Harder to do through your own tears.

He rolled out of her bed and went to check on the dough.

 

#

The marble block began to take form in the evenings.  The Master watched, fascinated.  The older Time Lord didn’t even seem to notice.  He used no sketches or reproductions.  It was if anatomy was so ingrained into him, he was sculpting from a pattern already finished in his head. 

The occasions the Master tried to free-hand ended with monsters that didn’t live long.  There was always some component he forgot.  He remembered vividly that grafted snake-tangle creature he made because he thought a writhing, venomous ball that could be launched like a catapult would be intimidating and fun. 

It died within a day.  The thing could eat because of its mouths, but it hadn’t any way to get rid of waste. 

The Master wondered how old the Alchemist was, that the musculature and bones of his creations were that instinctive, and what he had done with all that time.


	6. Chapter 6

The Alchemist’s scream of agony echoed through the workshop as the flickering orange of regeneration was swept into purple fissions crackling from the control rod.  The force would have thrown the Master and Rassa farther across the room if they hadn’t clung to the legs of bolted-down tables.

“We’ve got to untie him!” shouted the Master.

“Why?” Rassa climbed back over to the control column and began to twist dials at a frantic pace. “It might still work—”

“You’re an idiot!” the Master fumed. But his body tightened in anticipation at the thought of taking it out on her later, even while he fought the gale.  Their repeated experiment of the afternoon they waited for dough had turned decidedly rough of late.  His back still smarted from the flogging she had dished out last night; it was his turn. 

Slowly, step by step, he worked himself into the genesis of the hurricane: the Alchemist tied to a chair with the null tarp thrown over it.  Twin purple and orange arcs looped from the control rod back into his chest.  The Master was impressed at the force of the scream; really, one of the best he’d ever heard.  It wasn’t often a Time Lord was pushed to the limit.  He grabbed a shard of obsidian he’d tucked in his sash for such emergencies and thrust it in the middle of the radiating power.

The twin arcs vanished. Sizzles and pops shot from the command rod.  A tiny tendril of glowing violet emanated from a column and Rassa moved at the controls like a wild woman to ground it. The obsidian turned warm--then hot--in the Master’s hand and he dropped it.  The scream stopped.

Then came the sweet, descending whir of the machine powering down.

The Alchemist sagged against the ropes that tied him, panting raggedly.  “I’m running out of time.”

“What do you mean?”  the Master grabbed a cloth and retrieved the shard.  It easily seared through the Alchemist’s bindings.

“It’s called regeneration sickness.  I’ve used too much of my resources and my body can’t create enough energy to function properly anymore. I was foolish, and eager in my research.  This is the price.”

Well, that would explain some things.  The Master threw the burned ropes on the ground.  “I’ll get him back to his room,” he told Rassa, who had already opened the command rod to probe for faults, tools in hand.  She nodded without looking up.

He hesitated, then draped the frail elder’s arm over his shoulder to help him walk.  They staggered like a drunken couple in a three-legged race the short distance to the Alchemist’s sleeping alcove, and then the few further steps to his cot. 

At last the Master was able to lay him down.  He shut the door, then knelt alongside; deftly wedging a pillow under the old man’s head. “You could regenerate.  Wipe the slate clean, start new.” 

“On _purpose_?” the Alchemist's shock was obvious. 

The Master sighed.  Really?  He pulled a blanket over the weary Time Lord.   “It will fix it.  At least, there’s a good chance.  They found that with soldiers in the Time War—”

“The what war?”

Damn.  “Just soldiers,” he leaned his elbow on the mattress edge, pretending the phrase hadn’t happened. “Soldiers who used too much regeneration energy.  They became blind, deaf, some were too weak to walk.  Others seemed fine until their bodies started to waste to skeletons, burning themselves up from the inside.  But if the afflicted regenerated before it was all gone, the renewal would often reset the balance.”

“Often,” the other’s voice was weak, but his eyes were bright with curiosity.  “Not, always?”

“No.  For some, it had already gone too far, and they died a true death.  But they were going to die anyway.  It was considered better to try.”

“Student, did these soldiers kill themselves,” whispered the old man.

“Not at first,” the Master replied.  “It was found accidentally, when the wing of a mobile hospital used to house the afflicted was blasted.  Instead of dying, the patients regenerated into perfect health.  Yet, afterwards, a surprising number of those with the acute disease couldn’t bear to suicide.  Even to save themselves.  Even knowing they’d likely be all right at the other end, and this was the only alternative to oblivion.” And in a combat zone, willing donation from the healthy to sick was treason.  

“They chose to die, in the end.  Not just die but endure drawn-out regressions of agonizing decay. And those ministering to them tut-tutted with regret and got in philosophical debates about the sanctity of life.  They didn’t lift a finger to intervene. That’s how tethered to custom we marvelous Time Lords are.” 

“ _I_ couldn’t do it,” the Alchemist confessed.

The Master almost laughed at him. He felt again the power of the poison coursing through his veins, that intoxicating control over his own mortality.

“It doesn’t matter anyway, I’m on my last one,” the man coughed and went on.  “My thirteenth life.  No more after this.  All my projects undone, my work unfinished…can you believe the High Councilor stepped in and forbade any citizen to grant me more?” The last was almost an outraged wail.  “He won’t interfere with my work, but he will limit the time I have to do it, the weak hypocrite.”

Oh.  _Oh._   Of course.  It all snapped into place.  The Master at once knew why it happened and he had the vaguest outline of what; there were so many of the right elements present.  The only thing he missed was _how_. 

“I have enough left for one more try,” the Alchemist wheezed, getting the words out.  “Maybe two at the outside.  I think if, as you say, my eyes or ears were going to go I wouldn’t be looking at you now.  But it won’t be long before my kidneys shut down and my hearts stop.  If I’m going to make a breakthrough, it has to be soon or not at all.”

“All you need is once,” the Master told him.  “And then you’ll have forever.”


	7. Chapter 7

Rassa was an exceptional cook.  When the Master mentioned it in the kitchen one night, she merely said: “Why do you think the Alchemist took me on?  It’s not like he loves the company.  He does, however, love krumpts with his morning tea.”  She quirked a grin.  “It was fortunate I remembered how to make them.  It had been quite a long time.”

“I don’t understand what the fuss is about dinner,” the Master griped.  “Why he insists on a production.  It seems unlike him.”  He tried for a taste of the bubbling stew and his spoon was swatted away by Rassa’s spatula before he could dip it down.

“Where were you raised, the Drylands?”

The Master was taken aback.  “What?”

She stared speculatively at him, then all at once her eyebrows rose in comprehension. But if a discovery was made, she kept it to herself.  She continued as if the last exchange hadn’t happened.  

“The evening meal was a sacred time of solace and company, back in the day,” she intoned like a practiced lecturer, underlining her remarks by waves of the spatula.  “No matter where you were, or how intense your studies, within a household you came together to share food.  Now it only seems to be obligatory on the high holidays,” she sighed.  “The Alchemist respects tradition.”

Right. _Those_ dinners.  His father always found a reason to bellow at his son in thunderous tones that generally ended in torment before bedtime.  When the Master arrived at the Academy, it had been a relief in so many ways.  With effort he pushed aside the memory and returned to the conversation. “Of course, it isn’t tradition for _him_ , is it?  It’s just how things are.”

“It’s how things are for me as well, _Student_.” Rassa retorted.

“It’s amazing how some cling to the past, even when the future demands constant change to survive.  Don’t you find?”  He said it idly but watched her with care.    

“Yes,” she met his gaze.  “I’ve had this argument before.  It’s far preferable to take the next step, no matter how dire, when the alternative is to lose everything that matters.”

He heard a voice in his mind, _This is what they were doing when Arcadia fell.  This was their grand plan._

And it was gone.

 

#

 

The first bite of stew was as good as her krumpts, as good as any meal he had here.  The Alchemist said little but ate with intensity.

“I know what your problem is,” the Master announced.

He nearly yelped at sudden ankle pain. Someone had kicked it.  He bet it wasn’t the Alchemist.

“What?” the old man was clearly impatient to finish inhaling his bowl.

“You’re missing time.  Ow!” Now his ankle was outright clobbered.  He struck back with his injured foot and hit air.  Fine.  He pushed back from the table and began to pace; she couldn’t kick him if he wasn’t there.

“Your idea is to meld regeneration energy with transmutation and create cells that will never die.  But something has to turn the engine.  It’s all primed and ready to go, but you have to put a key in.”

“I’m listening,”

“Time energy.  That’s your key.  That’s the spark that makes it happen--”

CRASH.

The entire tureen of soup fell to the floor and smashed, broken pottery mixed with splatters of gravy and vegetables everywhere.

Rassa leapt up.  “Oh, I’m sorry!  I do apologize, Alchemist.  I was helping myself to more and bumped it.  Come, Student, help me get a bucket and rags to clean it up—”

“Just fetch the rewind,” the Alchemist protested.  “No need to waste it.”

She pretended like she hadn’t heard, pulling the Master into the kitchen by his arm.

“What are you playing at?” she hissed.

The Master gave her a level stare.  “I could ask the same of you.”

“You can’t see the fixed point in time, straight ahead? We’re pushing it by even being here.  Do you want to rip a hole in the continuum?”

“Oh, pish posh,” the Master scoffed.  “The continuum can take a worse beating than that.  I offered a suggestion; a gentle nudge.  In the right direction, sure, but hardly an edict.”

“We observe and examine and never interfere!” Rassa struggled to express her fury while keeping a low volume.  “Didn’t the Academy teach you anything?  You have no way of knowing it was the right direction.  You could send him haring off on a wild hunt, splintering time with your idiocy.”

“It’s correct.  I know that, and you do too.”  He leaned in so close to her he could see the individual strands of graying hair escape her head scarf.  “Reverse-engineering is always easier, isn’t it?”

She stepped away.  “I know who you are.  Remember that before you lay everything out before him.”

“Do you?”  The Master inquired.

 


	8. Chapter 8

He spent the rest of the evening cleaning shards and stew from the floor.  But his thoughts were far away; a conversation replayed in his mind that started him on a quest to break into one of the most secure locations on Gallifrey.

It began with a calm voice, lives ago, asking a simple question:

“Have you ever heard of the Weeping Angels?”

That sentence was the first the Master learned of their existence.  He wasn’t that well-traveled back then, and he was much better at talking, well, ordering, than listening.

But he listened now.  He didn’t have a choice.

He was in the darkest cell under Arcadia, they had been questioning him for days.  His hands were tied, but not tightly.  If he struggled, the bonds constricted.  He had learned not to struggle. 

There was a drip of water.  It was well out of sight but echoed through those chambers of the damned.  It slowly drove him mad. Stubbornness coupled with vanity was all that kept him quiet anymore; they underestimated how strong that could be. 

They would not break him.  He was the Master.  He refused to think about what else was at stake.

The query about the Weeping Angels was the only question he was asked in that place that he hadn’t known the answer to.  Also, this interrogator was new.  If the voice belonged to the individual he thought it did, he must have achieved a truly impressive level of notoriety. The Master was gratified and flattered.

The man sitting in that unpleasant room with him was, he was certain, none other than The Lord High President himself.

“Let me tell you about them.”  The voice was gentle.  All the Master could see of his visitor was the faintest glints off the official robes and collar. 

“They resemble marble statues.  They are, in fact, just that.  But these are alive.  They were given the name Angels; they often have wings as celestial beings do according to the myths across hundreds of planets.  Visibly weeping into their hands until they are ready to strike.”

He paused to let that digest, then went on.  “They only move when no one is looking at them.  If you so much as blink, it’s too late.  They feed on time energy, and with a touch they can strand you in the past, and feast on the potential life you would have lived.  They can’t speak; if they need to they kill you instead: and if they kill a Time Lord, you truly die.  They will eat away your regenerations.”

“Why are you telling me this?  Are you going to bring one here?”  The Master mustered a derisive laugh, though the darkness and the cold and the drip, drip of the water gave the words a hollow knell.

“No.”  The negative was satisfied.  “If you don’t tell us what we want to know, there is a different punishment for those Time Lords who will not be reasonable and live within our laws.  The Weeping Angels are not sentient, as far as we can tell, though they can seem to possess a kind of cunning.  They only know hunger and satiation.  And they live forever.”

His interrogator put his lips almost against the Master’s ear.  If only he was unbound and had a shank to pierce the Lord High President’s throat. 

“We are Time Lords, we have evolved beyond mere execution.  That is for lesser cultures, cruder societies.  We are civilized.”

“I’m not.”  The Master said.  “I could kill you here.  Now.”

“If you tried, we would take you to the room where he is kept and make you one of them.”

Not much fazed the Master, but this utterance chilled him.

“The Weeping Angels have long been our ultimate option.”  There was a pause.  “You may want to start being a bit more cooperative.”

Robes rustled as the other stood.  He left his prisoner tied, cold, and listening to the never-ending drip of water.

 

The Master shivered with the memory as he crawled to pick up broken dishware; the tepid, pooling broth soaking the knees of his trousers.  A spike of anger reminded him that he was being stupid.  He didn’t have to be here, playing apprentice in the hope he’d find a magic talisman of knowledge to defeat the Angels.  His instinct was to flee as soon as he finished reviewing the transmission in his relay station, and knew they were safe.  For now.  Because “for now”, was the pertinent phrase here.  And it would be a short “for now” if his hunch was correct.

Get the hell out when things go south.  Walk away and start over.  He was spending more time than he wanted making decisions about minutia anyway.  The best part was making it work.  It got tedious once it did.  Time to go.

But _they had taken what was his._  

Was he just going to roll over and _let_ them?  Give up everything he had worked for, put the hard-learned lessons of Missy aside?

A large piece of pottery landed in the bucket with a thunk, hurled with the frustration of his thoughts.  He should have shrugged and said: yes.  Strolled out right then into his Tardis, bound for who knows where.  That he hadn’t, seemed like insanity from his current all-fours posture on the floor.

The same instant that he decided _no_ , he knew he had to go back to Gallifrey. The answer was there.

That tore it, because then it became a challenge he could only overcome with ingenuity and daring.  _Then_ he was stuck.  The Master sighed as he threw three more chunks in.  He tried to wipe his stewy fingers on his tunic, with indifferent success.  Even so, he allowed himself a glow of pride about how neatly he had managed _that_ feat.

The Time Lords, in their charming paranoia, had closed Gallifrey ever since it appeared in the world again.  The Daleks would find them if the secret of their continued existence was known, the High Council decided.  Their deadliest enemy hammering down the full military might of the empire to annihilate the weakened Time Lords was their worst nightmare.  To stay hidden is to stay silent, so none could enter or exit the planet until the crisis was over.  No one dared ask if it would ever _be_ over. To ensure compliance, a spacetime dilation net, an improved version of the Skytrench used in the Time War, was set to snare any Tardis passing through.

Citizens grumbled, but they obeyed.  Rebellion would be crass.

Meanwhile, The Master recovered from his botched regeneration.  The Time Lords did not punish the injured; they would fix him, let him heal; then exact their retribution.  It didn’t take a ton of imagination to guess what it would be.

Once he was well enough and reacquired his Tardis, he snuck into the maintenance hub and fused the sprawling machine that supported the net. 

That was a satisfying night, watching decades, centuries of work poof into sparkling showers; like a garden filled with colored lightning that moved towards the horizon as the interconnected hardware blew up in sequence.  He was so busy admiring it, he almost forgot to leave. 

The problem was, the Time Lords let him escape because they couldn’t chase after him without tipping their hand.  But there were thousands, millions of trackers all over the planet tuned to read energy signatures. If he landed anywhere, they’d know in seconds. 

And if they repaired the net, he wouldn’t even make it that far. 

Those odds favored him.  The effort involved would be astronomical, and if the population didn’t know the net was down, everyone would assume it wasn’t and stay put. But there was a risk.  If he was wrong, he’d see the Weeping Angel all right.  He’d be one.

Unless he timed it just right.


	9. Chapter 9

The Alchemist was weakening.

If his Tardis, like the Doctor’s, could have gone for help, she would have.  But there was no use.

Maybe she found assistance after all, in the otherworldly fashion of those entities.  A couple of duplicitous Time Lords to comfort a dying artist/inventor in his final days. The Master looked at Rassa.  He could see the bruise on her neck from the previous afternoon’s bedroom adventures.  He shook his head.  The poor thing must really be desperate if that was true.

He half-way expected their private games to cease after the near declaration of war the night Rassa smashed the stew tureen.  Instead, they turned savage.

He rediscovered the glory of flailing a chain against another’s unblemished skin, like the first footprint in virgin snow.  He tied Rassa and beat her with the strength borne of futile frustration that he had to serve here and wait, guilt that his friend was dead and it was wholly his fault; self-loathing that in another life his incarnations had murdered each other for spite. 

When he took his own beatings, he felt whole again as the iron struck his limbs, physical pain was nothing compared to the litany of voices he had endured in the vault, and oddly cleansing.  Like penance. If he did it enough, perhaps someday he would stop hearing the Doctor plead, _Just be kind._  

Rassa barely spoke to him anymore.  What she wanted to say, she wrote on his flesh in his own fluids.  As he did hers.  And in the end, when they sponged off silently, they looked at each other in shared pain, shared hatred.

The Alchemist shuttled between the studio with his statues, and the work room with his research and transmutation device.  Adding time proved elusive.  The obvious solution of hooking up his Tardis to the columns nearly threw them all into the vortex.  She was sulky and obstinate for a week, dimming lights when they entered rooms and chilling the temperature until they could see their breath.  The Master wasn’t anxious to repeat the experiment.

Rassa was right about one thing.  All the possibilities combined until it was down to a mere handful.  And there it hung, day after day.  This was unheard of.  It put him on edge, like spending the night in a haunted house. 

Then came the morning the Alchemist could not rise. “It has to be now. Today. I won’t make it until evening,” he gasped.

One possibility left. The apprentices exchanged frenzied looks.  The Master was missing something.  He knew it.  Rassa had distracted him, and abruptly he wondered if that was her intention all along.

“Bring me the rewind from the study, Rassa.  Please,” It was an effort for the Alchemist to keep his voice steady.  “I thought of this last night.  It may solve it.”  Rassa acknowledged the request with a nod and left.

Of course. The rewind contained bursts of time energy, coiled and stored.  Not enough to fry the system, but—maybe--enough to work the key.

“You,” the Alchemist ordered the Master.  “Come here.”

The Master bent down to listen.

“We’re approaching a fixed point in time.”

“I know.”

 “I have no idea why.  I wish I did.  Maybe the experiment will work, maybe it’s that momentous.”  The Alchemist tried to laugh at his hubris but it turned into a cough. “I also don’t know why Rassa is here.  I like that girl, but she’s dangerous.  I can watch over her now; but if this is a fixed point…I dream sometimes.”  His smile was wan.  “My mother was the last of the great prophets, you know. The last born with the ability to see, imperfectly, but at all points in time, like a Tardis.” He didn’t say ‘Tardis’, he used the high Gallifreyan term for it and the Master had to mull over the word to even parse it.  So quickly one became accustomed to the slang.  “She always said she couldn’t tell a quarter of what she knew, because it would cause too many changes.  I only now understand what she meant.”

“Who is Rassa?” the Master asked urgently. 

“I don’t know.  I think you do.  That’s all I can see.” The Alchemist took the young Time Lord’s hand with his wrinkled one.  “Promise me, that if her plans are half as dark as I fear, you will stop her.  You must.”

Is this what it felt like to be the Doctor?  The Master didn’t know whether to be amused or appalled.

“Why are you asking me?”  He pulled his hand away.

“Do you see anyone else?”  the old man shot back.

“Anyone else what?” Rassa had returned.  At least the Master hoped she’d just gotten there, that she hadn’t been lingering for the whole conversation.  Oh well, if she had, they’d have a pointed discussion later.  Maybe he could kill her in self-defense.  That would be all right, wouldn’t it?  Murdering someone who wanted to murder you was acceptable, surely…his fingers itched.

Rassa handed the dying man the time device.  He opened it up and made some adjustments with a selection of tools on his nightstand.  “If you didn’t have the gene that allows it, your body won’t even try to regenerate out of your last life,” she told him.  “Many don’t.”

“Do you need to double check?”  The Master challenged.  “Or don’t you trust yourself?”

She glared at him. “Moron. It’s there.”

“Children,” the Alchemist cut across the nervous bickering.  He looked at his apprentices with irony, one to the other.  “It’s time.”


	10. Chapter 10

The Master wondered if he _had_ timed his landing just right; if Gallifrey’s Chancellery Guards were going to leap out from the darkness any minute and chain him up.  At least, they would try. 

Blades of varying length circled his waist; range weapons bisected his chest.  A pack of extra supplies hung over a shoulder.  In one hand he held a closed umbrella.  In the other, his laser screwdriver. The heady mix of excitement, anticipation, with a daub of real fear wormed in his gut as he exited through the doors.

It was dark.  And quiet.

His Tardis now resembled a schist outcropping, these spaces were carved from the bedrock that supported Arcadia.  He was mildly surprised to find nothing had changed since his sojourn down here.  He even heard dripping.  Surely, whatever was being dripped on would have eroded away by now?

It sounded closer.  He wasn’t in his old prison cell.

He spared a moment of thanks for that.  If this was time-locked, like his cell had been, it would be lost to him.  Probably it wasn’t because that would impede its function.

It had taken years of sporadic research before he pinpointed this location.  It didn’t appear on any schematics; in fact, the discrepancy between total and recorded dimensions was how he found it.  They covered their tracks perfunctorily, but not well enough.

There was always an excuse why he avoided coming here.  Going back to Gallifrey wasn’t worth the risk, he told himself.  Especially since it was just for a whim.  But what a whim.  To stand in the same room as a creature so terrible it had become the Time Lords’ personal demon. To behold the dark yield of everything they claimed they fought.  What would he see? Whose face would it have?  The notion taunted him with a siren call.

Yet, he wasn’t immune either, because he had never done it.

When he was working on the Doctor’s Tardis, he found record in the logs of a recent energy signature that originated on Gallifrey.  The Tardis thought this odd enough to include the coordinates of the signature’s departure.  It meant that another Tardis had come in contact with the Doctor, and it left the planet after the Master had.  If his Tardis landed at the exact instant the other left, it would be masked by that takeoff. 

If he was wrong, a party of angry Time Lords would step out of the shadows at any second. 

If he was right, then he only had to contend with one Weeping Angel. 

Some days there were no good choices.

He stood with the closed doors of his Tardis at his back for long minutes, waiting. 

Nothing.

He was alone.  Well, almost.

Relieved, he pocketed the screwdriver.  He then produced a gravity globe from his pack and threw it into the air.  It was good to see again, even though light turned the interior into an ominous, craggy enclosure, glistening with moisture.

He was drawn to the center of the cavern where a white figure stood, slashed with black.  His hearts beat faster and he stared without blinking.  Entranced, he walked towards it.

What was he doing?

He stopped.

He was close now, close enough to see the graceful fingers folded over its face, the wings drooping down its back.  The statue was slightly crouched.  Cords snaked around it so many times, it resembled a ball of yarn. 

The figure sat upon a ribbon of inlay in the ground, expanded around its base to contract back on the other side in an eternal hoop. He risked a glance and spied controls set into a wall.

A dark, round spot marked the middle.  Unlike the rocks, no light reflected from it.

So that’s where the victims stood.  Those Time Lords who were too outspoken or refused to conform.  They were probably drugged, the Master would have used a paralytic to make their limbs rigid, so they would stand on their own.  Then the Angel…what exactly…?

Transformed them. 

Using itself as a template.

The Master stood before the worst impulses of his kind.  Those lofty Time Lords and Ladies, with their impassioned speeches of reason and enlightenment; _this_ is who his people really were. Those who gave the command, sure, but also those complicit in the process.  The civilians who prepared the victims; then packed up the new statues for transport in crates or traceless, biodegradable foam; bound for anywhere.  The pilots who left their cargo on empty planets, primitive moons, wherever the Time Lords’ ad-hoc penal system would not be detected.  Far from Gallifrey so they would never return. The Master felt a kind of vindicated recognition, a swelling pride to stand with the collective efforts of their finest. He belonged there.

The Angel stared ahead, semi-concealed by its hands.  Had he blinked?  He must have, a moment ago its eyes were covered.  He didn’t think it could move enough to touch him.  It had been down here for millennia, the cords that restrained it must be effective.  

The hands were completely lowered now, teeth bared and fierce; marble eyes distended as though straining--

His brain was on fire, what, _what_ \---

A series of numbers seared into his mind.  Coordinates.  It burned.

Fighting the crippling agony inside his skull, he stumbled back into his Tardis.  The minute the doors were shut, the pain cut off with the precision of a symphony’s last note.

He punched the numbers into his console.  He had no idea where they would take him, if it was a trap or a real communication but, hey, he came looking for clues.  This qualified.

The Tardis landed on an inhospitable planet in the middle of a storm that he guessed never ended.  In the distance was a squat, glassed in-house.  Even from here he recognized the Gallifreyan design.

A cover story was devised, subject to alteration depending what he found.  Then he changed out of his Time Lord Rambo outfit.

He would finally get real answers about the hell his people had wrought.


	11. Chapter 11

The Alchemist, barely breathing, managed to hobble over to stand on the null tarp. His apprentices wanted him to lie down but he was adamant, his machine worked better with more surface area for transmutation exposed.  The rewind had been hastily hotwired into one of the columns.  The Master wondered what the Alchemist would have done if he and Rassa weren’t here to activate it; rig it up into a remote, then toss it away at last minute?  That would add an even greater liability.

He could feel the fixed point in time trembling out of sight like the sun before it rises, the hint of dawn staining the horizon.

“Now,” the Alchemist told Rassa.

Rassa pushed the button.

The four purple beams shot out, hitting the Time Lord in a ring; his back, arms, and chest.  He screamed.  It was worse than ever before. 

“Hold it!” shouted the Master, seeing Rassa about to pound the button to abort.  “It has to saturate completely.”

“He can’t take any more!” cried Rassa above the din of the screaming man and sizzling force field.

“His body has to try to regenerate with what’s left,” the Master argued.  “Or it _won’t_ work.”

“There isn’t enough.  He’s in agony!  Can’t you _hear_ him?  _Can’t you feel it_?”

The Master pulled her away just as her finger would have landed on the button.

“I’ll do it,” he said flatly.  His emotions bundled off somewhere they couldn’t bother him. It was heaven. The Master watched the man writhe with eyes that had seen a thousand beings expire in front of him. Rassa was on her knees, thrashing in tandem with Alchemist, she screamed as he did.

The Master held firm.  It had to have played out more or less the way the old Time Lord thought; if he was using a remote there were only limited ways to interfere once it got going. He wasn’t near the end yet, in the Master’s informed opinion.  Those screams were not death agonies.

He heard the moment when the vocal chords gave out, the rending shrieks a tired, scratched whine uttered by a wide-open mouth.

And then he saw the orange glow light the Alchemist’s skin.

It was faint, so faint, the last gasp of regeneration energy abandoning the life functions it oversaw, even in the final cycle. 

It had to be enough.

The Master took a deep breath and slammed the button that would begin phase two, and introduce the catalyst of time.

The man in the middle grew brighter and brighter until it wasn’t a man anymore, just man-shaped; and only if you really looked. 

 _What do I do?_   The Master did not hear the words but felt them with every psychic atom in his makeup tuned to hear.  He was overwhelmed with confusion and despair that was not his.

He thought furiously.  The cells were primed, all the cells in his body.  Transmuted, fired with the cocktail of energies, ready for permanence.  But they couldn’t exist as they were, you couldn’t take organic flesh, bestow immortality and keep it flesh.  Preposterous.  It was too fragile—

Wait, was that _his_ thought?

What form would be comfortable, familiar, undying…and beautiful?

What form did he know so well he didn’t need a reference, but kept all of it in his head?

The bright white blob took on a definite shape, pulsed for a minute then stopped.

The beams cut off, and the machine began its descending whir. 

It was over.

Silence fell, after so much noise.  He heard Rassa move, shaking, and sit up.

He saw the same thing she did at the same moment.  Their collective indrawn breaths of shock sounded loud in the quiet.

In the center of the now inert columns stood a marble Angel.

His hands covered his face, but the Master could see the faintest wisp of a smile through them.

Rassa got to her feet.  “Don’t blink.”

“Don’t be stupid. Of course not.”

“That foolish old man.” There was respect and fondness in her voice.  “He loved studying his damn statues so much that he fathered a race that solely exist when someone sees them.  Literally the only way they can budge is when no one is.”

“And we’re lucky that’s the case,” the Master reminded her.  “Or we’d already be dead.”

“They use short bursts of time,” Rassa went on, awed.  “They aren’t quick, they don’t even move, they just know where they’re supposed to be in the next instant and use time to get there.  It’s an inverted rewind.  A fast-forward.  Why did we never notice?”

They heard the distinctive whooshs of multiple Tardis’ landing.

“We’ve got to go,” the Master said.  “The Time Lords are coming.”

Rassa smiled at him.  It wasn’t comforting.  “They’re already here.  But I have what I came for.  I’m taking a short cut.”

“To where?  Who are you?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know…Doctor?”  She hurled the word in triumph.

The Master blinked at her.  Then he started to laugh.  He laughed harder than he had since the Doctor admitted he was blind.  Oh.  Goodness.  That was…that was…The Master started up again.  He had to hold on to the wall for support.

“You honestly think the Doctor is into whips and chains?”  He gasped.  “That he’d have fun beating you bloody?” he wiped tears from his eyes.  “Have you never met him?”  And he was off again.  He heard footsteps and probably should leave, but, my God.

Rassa glared at him, hatred burning in it, but the Master had been hated before and found it even funnier.  Without another word, she disappeared.

Most of the building around him vanished as well.  The rain dumped buckets on his head in seconds.  The walls that were left swayed in the howling wind and wouldn’t last long.

Oh, yeah, the Alchemist’s Tardis.  So that was her shortcut.  How did she ever talk the old girl into it?

He realized that while he was laughing, and Rassa had left, no one was looking at the angel.

His head turned just in time to freeze bared marble teeth an inch away from his nose.  There was no reason why he shouldn’t have been displaced in time a hundred times over.  Or killed.  You never knew with angels.

But the statue just stared like the dead stone it was.  Yet, somehow, hungry.

The Master backed away, trying to keep his gaze steady while avoiding those eyes.

He heard voices. 

“What is that thing?”

“Where is the Alchemist—?”

“Who are you—?” The last was directed at him.

“Look at the angel!” The Master ordered.  “Not in the eyes, anywhere else.  Don’t blink.  It will kill you if you do.”  A possible exaggeration, but only a possible one. 

And while they were there, trapped and motionless, staring at the brand-new life form he had helped usher into the world, he slipped behind a flimsy, freestanding wall and ran back through the storm to where he hid his Tardis.

The splendor of his courtyard control room burned his eyes, it had been so long since he’d seen green growing things.  Even fake green growing things.  The blue sky was a revelation.

As he called up the steering column from the fountain, he still couldn’t help laughing.


	12. Chapter 12

And here he was, back in the cavern where the Angel was kept.  He wasn’t sure why.

The doors opened to the same stone walls, dripping water, and statue bound with cords.  Again, he spotted the inlay the Angel sat on, but his eyes were more informed now.  Ah. A permanent transmuter, probably more powerful than the portable one.  Refined as well, if the Angel was part of the mechanism. This was why the High Councilor of the time would eagerly support the Alchemist’s work but forbid anyone to extend the elder’s life: He wanted it for himself.  The ultimate weapon against his own people. 

It was deliciously ruthless.  Breathtaking, really.

_Quickly, you have a minute or two at best._

The Master froze.  Someone was talking in his head.  Automatically, he looked at the only other thing here.

The angel that crouched, bound, with drooping wings, was the same Angel the Alchemist became.

How many centuries upon centuries had he moldered here?

_That stunt, when you camouflaged your signature through the instant a Tardis took off, worked the first time, but the timing offset with your return.  Someone has noticed._

“Are you talking to me?” The Master asked.

_There is no time, take me with you._

“What, so you can eat me?”

_I’m not going to eat you!  I’m the Alchemist.  Remember?_

“I know who you were, but I also know what you’ve become.”

He heard thuds and voices and the crack of materialization.

_If you don’t get me out, I have no choice.  They will make me do what I do, and you will cease to exist.  Trust me or not.  Choose._

Now the Master wished he’d brought his arsenal with him, but he’d been a bit out of it.  He reached into his baggy pocket of his apprentice garb and pulled out a screwdriver.  Not his laser; something friendlier. He didn’t know why it was in there. For a split second he remembered a library, and a Tardis blue notebook it once rested on. 

He activated River’s screwdriver and pointed it at the Angel. 

Nothing.

“Someone’s broken in!”  Two Time Lords came at him hands full of glowing rope and what looked like some sort of a gun he didn’t recognize.  Weapon tech must have advanced since he deserted the Time War.

“Who are you, state your business—”

“You’ll never know if you shoot me.”  The Master bluffed.

“He’s trying to free the creature!”  One cried in horror.

“I need the frequency that will undo the cords!” the Master shouted at the Angel.  “It has to be exact. I don’t have time to experiment.”

The frequency appeared instantly in his head.  It was relayed through the screwdriver as fast as thought, and the cords melted away.

The gravity globe overhead went black for just a second.

The Angel was no longer there.

A gun clanged at the Master’s feet as the man holding it had vanished.  The angel had one hand outstretched; frozen, now that the Master looked.

The Master bent to grab it, and a searing tear at his shoulder sent him into a paroxysm of agony.

It would have severed his neck if he hadn’t bent down.

Incensed, he pointed the gun and fired.  The unholy joy as always gripped him as he watched the other Time Lord struggle to breathe, his natural processes scuttled by the incredible burst of electromagnetic force--why had he given this up?  He wanted to bathe in blood, he wanted to hear unending shrieks.  The pleading eyes of the dying Time Lord strangely matched the hole blown in his torso…

What?  No, his chest was still there.  The gun the Master held wasn’t the same.  But he saw a glistening, gaping circle of nothing, when Bill--

He was back on the colony ship teetering on the realization of where he really was, and what future he faced.

His hand shook as he lowered the gun.  The room lit with orange as the regeneration started in the man he had just shot.

The Master must have blinked because in the next instant, the angel’s hand hovered over the regenerating Time Lord.  All the amber light show diverted into the outstretched hand.  The hapless body twitched and seized, not even able to scream.  And in a few long seconds it was all over.

A shrunken husk joined another on the floor.  It rocked once, then stilled.

The angel glowed orange for a moment then returned to inanimate marble.

“They warned me you could do that.”

_They were right. Thank you for bringing them.  It was the perfect hearty meal for the task ahead._

That was sobering.  “And you think I’m going to let you aboard my Tardis.”

_You can’t defeat him without me._

“Who?”

_You know._

The Master was getting very tired of people, and quasi-animate objects?  Saying that to him, but he’d live.  Now was not the time to be picky in the face of a willing ally.

He turned his back and opened the door.


	13. Chapter 13

The Master hadn’t really considered his Tardis’ reaction to the passenger.

The minute the door shut behind them, thunderclouds gathered overhead.  A violent wind shook the trees, the grass bent.

And the angel had his hand on the console.

“Off,” the Master ordered, as if he was talking to an ill-mannered visitor, not the most fearsome thing to roam the galaxy.

The Alchemist was perfectly capable of piloting a Tardis, the Angel would be too.  Only what would that ravenous statue _do_ with it?  Part of him wanted to find out.

Then the Angel was resting against a marble column, motionless, as if he’d always been there.

_I only wanted to feel one again.  I wasn’t going anywhere._

His Tardis disagreed, her warning cloister bell began to sound.       

“What has gotten into you?” he said, exasperated.  She remained steady by his side through every genocide, evil intrigue, and sadistic plot, and now she developed a conscience?  Seriously?

Maybe an introduction would help.  “Tardis, darling, this is my old mentor, the Alchemist.  He’s also a Weeping Angel.  But he hasn’t once informed me I’m going to be deleted or exterminated so that’s a plus.  I assume he has other plans.”

_Correct.  I bear your machine no ill will._

The Master gave him a sharp look.  “Few do.  But that doesn’t prevent them from oh, rewiring one to hold a paradox in place or exploiting a battalion to fight the Time War.  Tardis’ don’t get asked permission.”

_I’m familiar with the concept._

True.  “You were aware all that time.  Can you speak to anyone, or just me?”

_The only reason we can converse is that you were with my mind the instant I changed.  I’ve known you for eons. But it was like a transmission between two stations where one is sound and one is broken.  When you stood before me the first time, your brainwaves were as familiar to me as my own, but I only made contact using everything I had; and even then it squealed with feedback, so to speak, and hurt you.  At least you’re here, so the numbers got through._

“They did.”

_When you returned, you had passed the moment of my creation so you were attuned to me as well and able to receive.  Using the metaphor, both stations are active and information now flows freely._

“More or less,” he conceded.  “We’re going to the planet Ortes, because apparently the Weeping Angels have taken it over.  Are you going to help me, or lead a coup?”

But the Angel’s face was covered again, it was posed, unmoving; as lifeless as the column it stood by.

It was all the answer he was going to get.


	14. Chapter 14

The Tardis landed with the usual thump and whoosh.

The angel stood next to the columns where he had been since their conversation, he hadn’t--perhaps “sent” would be the appropriate verb--another word.

The Master, alight with excitement, threw open his doors then winced at the strain on his injured shoulder.  But it was already fading, thanks to his expertise and his Tardis’ extensive medical suite.  He was glad he’d changed back into his familiar denim sleeveless jacket, matching black jeans with the green splash of silk tank top.  If he was going down, he’d go down as _him_.  He skipped out onto the alien world, boot chains jangling.

It was dark, but the Weeping Angels shone in the light from two moons in the sky, one full, one crescent.

They were massed in front of him, graceful, beautiful and deadly.  Generations of Time Lord and Lady rebels turned to stone and their souls stripped away…or trapped forever.  He didn’t know which.

They hated him.  He could feel it.

He wondered what it would be like to be one, chasing Time energy across the stars, never feeling cold or heat, or any discernable emotion.

He couldn’t watch all of them.  There were too many.  One would attack, and then he’d either end up displaced out of his timeline, or he’d become a desiccated corpse and experience true death.  If he didn’t fight, they would probably just zap him. Well, he’d succeeded in the face of worse odds.  He closed his eyes, ready. 

The wind blew against his face, leaves rustled on far-away trees.

He squinted one eye open.  None of the angels had moved, they were still in perfect battle rows.

Almost none, he amended.  His Angel was now next to his elbow, taking in the throng with aplomb.

_This Time Lord is under my protection.  You shall not harm him._

“A guest!  Lovely.”  A living voice rang out in the stillness.

A man emerged from behind the statues.  He was in his middle years, vigorous, tanned and muscular.  A living caricature of the perfect General.  He stopped after a couple of strides.

“You!”  He said with loathing.  He turned to the Angel.  “Why did you bring him?”

Something about the man’s clothing pinged at a sixth sense.  The finely tailored robes straining to contain the brawny figure.  The tattered cape.  The signet ring of office clinched it.

“Rassilon,” The Master hissed. 

Lord High President of the Time Lords, ruler of Gallifrey, with a bevy of Angels at his beck and call.

“They kicked you out didn’t they?”  The Master took in the state of the once resplendent brocade, the new face.  And the army of Weeping Angels did ring of desperation.

“No.”  Rassilon corrected at once.  “They did not.  It was that puerile do-gooder, that damnable Doctor.”

The Master’s eyebrows flew nearly to his hairline.  _Really?_

“He barged in, threw his clout around like a power-hungry viceroy.  He killed one my Lords and exiled me.  All because he was too stubborn to answer a simple question.  There was some issue about a human brat he was attached to.”

“And now, you’re raising an army of monsters.  Whatever do you plan to do with them?”  It was professional curiosity that prompted the question, the Master was impressed.

“To finish what we started.  To initiate the final sanction.  To rip the time vortex apart and ascend as creatures of consciousness alone, free of time and cause and effect while the rest of creation ceases to be.  To do what we would have done years ago it it hadn’t been for his meddlesome obstruction.”

 _Ascend as creatures of consciousness alone_ …the Master was back in a human’s ballroom lobbing deadly pulses of energy at the party of newly arrived Time Lords.  Only the faces had changed.

“Yeah, that’s the Doctor for you.  It’s _such_ a pain,” agreed the Master.

“We never found the culprit who leaked it, either.  It was agreed on in the strictest of confidence, in the most secret of our councils.  The final action of last resort.  And he _knew_.”

“It’s one of his more annoying personality traits,” the Master’s answer was automatic.  He wasn’t paying attention to the conversation anymore.  He studied Rassilon.

Rassilon was done showing off _._

 _Kill him._   The order came through the angels.  It was a mental voice that rang like a trumpet as opposed to his Angel’s which felt like a chisel scraping granite.

 _He’s a mortal being with a powerful will, I can’t compete with his strength.  I can’t stop him._ The Angel still had his hands over his eyes as if he couldn’t bear to look.

Don’t blink, don’t blink, don’t blink

The first angel to reach him was a tiny child with wings; he stared at her and heard the grind of stone to his left. A tall lad with flowers in his hair reached out, the girl on his right bared her teeth—

 _Student!  There were_ two _in the room the day I changed._

_STOP!_

The Master shouted in his mind with every ounce of strength.

They stopped.

He felt small, sullen energies coming from each one, and he knew they heard him as the Angel did.

 _Seize his Tardis!  We will make war throughout the galaxy!  It will be ours._ The trumpet voice stirred an almost irresistible call.

 _NO._ The Master dug in.

_Why?  Who are you to command?  What do you know, my young, weak, apprentice?  Step back and let your betters lead._

_No._

The pressure in his skull was excruciating.  It was two people on opposite sides of a door trying to push it open.  The only way through was if one yielded.  And neither would do that, so force topped force, and topped it again; the Master started to sweat.

The Angels caught in the battle began to vibrate with the almighty powers locked in a dead heat.

Wait, _apprentice_?

 _I never told you who I was, did I?_   The contrast of the light tone and the crippling force that he could not abate caused a trickle of sweat to slide past his ear.

_I recognize you, Student._

_You knew that was just an alias.  You guessed I was the Doctor, remember?  I’m not._

The titanic forces contested for a moment.

_I am the Master._

The force on the other side vanished.  The complete and utter astonishment was palpable.

Explosions set off, one after the other, as Angels dotted through the lines pulverized violently into powder--blown apart by the abrupt internal shift.  He was so surprised his own control slipped for an instant and the few angels still whole vanished with alacrity, somewhere in time.

“ _I slept with the Master_?”  Those words were spoken out loud, in a tone of horror.  The Master was a bit hurt.

“What do you mean, I slept with _Rassilon_.  The Lord High President!”  The Master retorted.  “The Time Lord who pursued me my entire life, who introduced me to the Weeping Angels in the first place and almost made me one.  Nice to know you like it rough.”  The Master laughed at the absurdity of it, and the fact he knew it would infuriate Rassilon.  “We should have done it ages ago.  You were really pretty good.”

“I always assumed you were the Doctor’s catamite,” sneered Rassilon.

The Master’s eyes went flat, all humor gone.  “And I always assumed that you were too much of a prick to be loved.”

The Time Lord's features contorted in contempt.  “Is that what you learned while slumming it with that perverted collector of humans, the crude sense of connection other races cling to like a security blanket?  Is that what it is?”

Another incarnation would never have said the word “love” to an enemy.  Would never have thought of it in those terms.  Would have denied it as cuttingly as Rassilon asked.

This time, on this world, the self-actualization had cost him too dearly.

“Yes,” he said.  “That’s what it is.”

Rassillon seemed startled, his pause was unusually long.  Then: “It doesn’t matter anyway.  I’m not defeated, you didn’t win.  You just blew the chaff away.  I’ll get the ones who scattered back in a minute.”

“And I’ll stop you again.”

“No, because you’ll no longer be alive.  Or, not alive as you are now.” 

Great hulking--God, what were they?--moving boulders appeared on either side of the former leader.  Two on one, two on the other.  They did not move smoothly, as the angels did, but in jerks that his eye caught.  Something was off.  Something wrong.

The Master gazed at them with the acumen of his kind.

They were made of loosely connected stones. That was all. They were immortal, certainly, but barely animate, with the roughest approximation of limbs and a body.  They were basically living rocks held together with bailing wire.

 _Stop_ , he tried.

 _You can’t.  They are his children, not mine_ , the Angel informed him.

He thought so.  That was the problem, the mind that made them was not a carver, steeped in the study of anatomy and the beauty of his art; it wasn’t even one willing to place himself in the circle to change his own form even while he changed them. 

“ _These_ are your Weeping Angels, your soldiers who will ensure victory?” the Master taunted.  “Who were they, your loyal followers?  Trusting enough to go where you told them to, after your exile.  But one changed his mind, didn’t he?  Shot your stupid face when you turned up; and scarpered in the Tardis they all arrived in.”

“Traitor,” growled Rassilon.  “It was a short incarnation. I was assassinated when I was caught using the Time Port instead of following the Doctor’s decree.  Too late, of course, I reached my destination. But that life was wasted when I got here.”

The Master swiftly filled in the blanks. Rassilon must have researched the creator of the Angels extensively during his long tenure, but the Alchemist hadn’t recorded his final breakthrough; he was too rushed—and, you know, _dying_ , by the end.  When it all went to hell, the Lord High President couldn’t evade arrest to both flee into time and nab the Angel; he chose flight.  He knew exactly where to go to learn how to make his own.

“These, my true subjects, pledged faith and donated what they had before they volunteered to become the first of my Giants,” Rassilon was swept up in his own triumph.  “I’ve lost count of how many lives I have.  Soon, I’ll add yours.”

The lumbering Giants advanced.  The Master pointed his laser screwdriver to blast them apart.  They paused and absorbed the blast, glowing.

He opened it up to the highest setting, the one that would kill a Time Lord.  But these creatures were no longer Time Lords.

They rocked back for a split second when the energy hit, and the Master thought he’d managed to overload their flawed functioning.  But then the weak network binding their bodies together pulsed in a purposeful way.  Their staggered locomotion smoothed and became a sinuous run.

If he fired again, they’d be on top of him.

His eyes flicked around for inspiration.  They were on a barren heath, the trees were at a distance.  Okay, he could work with that.  His screwdriver was so hot in his hand he could barely hold it, but he razed the earth in front of the golems.  The ground quaked and fissured, opening as deep as the Master could manage it. 

The running monsters fell in.  They groaned and twisted, the shining agates set in divots for eyes turning this way and that.

“Well,” the Master called to Rassilon, who was throwing a tantrum even while extolling his creations to get out.  “That was exciting.  Now what?”

Then they were still.

There was a mighty creak and groan of weighted soil pulling free.

The Giants climbed out.

They had bulked up with clods of raw earth and stone ripped away as they stood; they were now as high as buildings.  The efficiency gained minutes ago was lost and they lumbered once more, but each step covered an amazing distance.  Their heads towered above the scraggly tree line.

Say, what was that in the trees?  Glints of white….

 _Come.  Now._   The Master ordered.

The white glints turned into solid Angels, hidden or newly recalled after the destruction of the others.  But they hung back.  The Master sensed their trepidation. 

He sent a burst of his plan to his Angel.  _Can you tell them?_

_They’ve seen their brothers and sisters crumble to dust.  They want to leave this place._

The Master faced the Angel head on.  _Uncover your eyes.  Look._

And the Angel did.  It was not the bared teeth of attack that was behind the hands, but a sadness beyond mortal understanding.

 _This man chained you through lifetimes of whole stars, in the depths of a dungeon, even while he used you for his own ambition._   If words were whips, the Master flayed the Angel who used to be the Alchemist. He amplified the sending so Rassilon and all the other Angels would hear, as loud as he could.

  _He used you to drive all of us, all your people, along a well-rutted road of fear. To retain the stewardship of power bestowed by the frightened leader--who used a frail inventor’s final creation to stagnate our society for his own benefit._   _When we were tested by the Daleks—and failed—the Time Lord before you would have embarked on a path of wholesale destruction rather than admit his mistake and turn aside from it.  Anyone who was different or compassionate enough to see, to object, was either chased away or turned into an Angel.  You can’t let him win!  If you have any loyalty left, you owe that to Gallifrey.  You owe it to the Time Lords and Ladies you used to be, and what you sacrificed for the rest of them._

So this was what it felt like to make a Doctor speech.  The feeling of sweeping righteousness almost required a sword to brandish.  He wasn’t sure he even believed everything he had just said, but he was as furious to his depths as he’d ever been.  _This is for you, Doctor,_ he told the heavens.  _I tried to be you for two minutes.  Hope it was worth it._

The Giants were only a few steps away when they halted their advance, looking around as puzzled as their chiseled faces would allow.        

They were ringed by what was left of the Weeping Angel army.  The hulking monsters seemed to be dazzled by their counterparts’ appearance, so finely formed, so different from their own craggy mass.

 _Now_ , said the Angel.

Between one blink and the next, each of the statues held a hand out, laid on their foes.

The monsters exploded. 

The Master felt what happened through the angels and his own tuned senses.  Each section an Angel touched was sent to a different part of time, and the Giants were ripped asunder.  Gravel and dust flew where the pieces met, falling inert on the ground. In seconds, it was all that remained.  The binding energy poured out like water from a broken cup and the angels glowed as they feasted.

Another blink, their hands covered their faces once more.

 _My children_.  The Angel’s thought was profoundly sad.

Rassillon stared in disbelief.  “No,” he said.  “ _No!_ ”

“Rassilon, you are formally charged with the execution of hundreds of innocent Time Lords and Ladies by Weeping Angel,” The Master proclaimed.  “Due to the flagrant abuse of your powers and the public trust as the leader of Gallifrey, in the light of irrefutable proof--and since you tried to kill me--it’s with great pleasure I sentence you to immediate death.”

He rolled his laser screwdriver in his hand, trying to cool it.  He hoped he had enough oomph for one more go, he’d probably have to make another after this. 

“I’m Rassilon!  You can’t dare, your precious Doctor would never countenance murder—”

“I’m not the Doctor. And this is hardly murder. I’m just disposing of some old, stinking rubbish.”

He set it to maximum and pointed—

The tree Rassilon stood beside vanished.  The one behind it ignited with a burst of flame from the unencumbered laser blast.

Rassilon had just escaped in the Alchemist’s old Tardis.  He could be anywhen, anywhere.  The Master should have known. 

Ah well.  He couldn’t be completely sorry.  Maybe he could arrange a secluded, civil—well, civil with lancets and whips--hour between the two of them next time, before he killed the treasonous snake.  It would be therapeutic if nothing else.

His angel, the former Alchemist, regarded him with expectation.

_Take us._

_No,_ the Master answered.  But it was distracted.  A mysterious detail that occurred during the interchange was knocking on his subconscious with urgency. What? He tried to focus.   _It was enough of a risk to bring you here, I can’t let a herd of rapacious used-to-be Time Lords on board my Tardis.  If you lot can go anywhere in time and space I might as well not have bothered._

The Angel considered.  _Once trade resumes, there are plenty of ways off this planet for a patient piece of stone.  If you fetch the colonists, it can.  My children have been well fed and will be satiated for some time._

_Is the populace still together?_

_The Angels came because Rassilon called.  They came slowly, distances are difficult for us.  He had them wait until the last was in place to relocate the settlement all at once in time. Less loose ends, that way.  The pilot only witnessed the attack because he arrived earlier than expected.  So yes, they are all together._

_And you know where._

_I am one of the Angels, and they answer to me._

All right. The colony would return, he’d be a hero.  If no one inquired too closely as to what he actually did.

_You must bring me, though._

_What?_

_I want to see the universe._

The Master had a bizarre vision of taking up the mantle of the Doctor, roaming the galaxy in a rebellious Tardis and his Weeping Angel companion, fixing lives and righting wrongs.  He’d probably have to change his name.

_No._

_Why?  Haven’t I paid enough?_

_It wouldn’t work.  Not as a full-time deal._

He sensed crestfallen disappointment.  But the Angel didn’t argue.  He probably guessed what the Master would say.

_Then the Angels stay where they are, and the colonists are lost in time._

_I can talk to them too,_ the Master noted.

 _What about a single trip?_ The mind speech was quick to barter. _I could do a favor for you in return.  As payment._

The something that had niggled at him finally coalesced.

Holy…

He didn’t know a swear word strong enough.

“Can you get me through a time lock?”  He had to ask aloud, it was too daunting to think.

 _A time lock is a construct of the Time Lords.  I’m a Time Lord_ and _their construct.  I can put you anywhere you like._

“Fabulous.  I need to get onto Gallifrey, during a period that is locked. Come on.  You can link up to my Tardis and guide her.” He turned to go and found himself facing the Angel.

_She’ll obliterate me if I try._

“She won’t,” the Master argued.

 _Why don’t you go first?  I’ll watch.  Open yourself up until you’re completely vulnerable before her psychic circuits and see what she really thinks of you._ For the first time, the voice in his head had the stubborn, acerbic ring of the Alchemist he knew. _See?  I’ll take you, alone.  Just you._

“And strand me there?  Is that what you're after?"

 _I can be my own Tardis for short hops.  I’m not as limited as ordinary Weeping Angels_. There was a wistful, mental sigh. _I escaped once, at the beginning. They were fortunate to catch me._

The Master gave the Angel a measured look.  “After we return the colonists, you get both of us in and out. Well, unless you want to stay but I don’t recommend it.  How close do you have to be?”

The Angel considered.  _I can do it from Karn._


	15. Chapter 15

They were met on the desolate crags of inhospitable Karn by a small delegation of bowed heads and folded hands.  The Master mentally cried,  _Go, now,_ but nothing happened.  The Angel would not, or could not, take him further.  The Master suspected the latter and sighed.  The Sisters’ control over their domain was legendary.  And their psychic powers made lying useless.

 The Sister with obvious seniority stepped forward.  The Master was reminded of his most memorable tutor, the one he could never fool.  She heard all his excuses with a steely, skeptical eye and punished him often. Naturally, she saw through his father as well and elected not to stay long. 

“Why have you brought this creature here?”

 “I need to travel through the time lock, and the Angel says he’ll take me.”

“The Sisterhood must refuse passage.  Those events are time locked for a reason.”

“If I can’t get through, the War will look like a game of tag compared to what happens next.”

“We vowed not to help the Time Lords in their exercise of wild imperialism, and that holds for anything you change there.  We saw the future and would not have the vast resources we possess used for such terrible ends.  Without our consent, you go nowhere.”  She turned, then studied the Weeping Angel with great sadness.  “Ah.  There were always rumors.  Who was he?”

_Tell her._

“He was called the Alchemist.”

She swayed back at the news.  Had she known him?  A Sister might be old enough, powerful enough, to have lived so long.

“He asks a boon: that you will allow this for his sake.” The Master pressed on, seizing the advantage.

“You can talk to him?” the Sister whispered.

“Yes.”

“Is he….” She licked her lips.  “Is he well?”

The Master smiled with bitterness.  “He’s free, that’s close enough.  Now, would you deny him, he who has been wronged so greatly and for so long, this small request?”  He tried to throw in a bit of just indignation in his tone.

“You haven’t changed your name, have you?” the Sister accused him, waspishly.

“Not to ‘the Doctor’, if that’s what you’re insinuating,” the Master retorted.

“No, I wouldn’t think so.  But still…different than what you were.”

That was none of her business.  He ground his teeth and tried to tap into the patience that had allowed him to rot in a vault for decades, for generations on the colony ship. 

Not today.  Not with what was in front of him.

“Are you going to let us go, or are we having a messy, stupid, fight right in front of all your acolytes and a Weeping Angel?  These are the choices,” the Master didn’t try to mince words.

She stepped back, bowed her head graciously.  “We acquiesce.  The might of Karn will support and shield you.”

“Thank you, Sister,” he said formally, and bowed himself.  “Oh, and may I borrow some robes?”


	16. Chapter 16

He’d never seen it.  He’d only heard the stories.

Ash floated through the air from the fires in the sky as Arcadia burned.  Children shrieked as their mothers hurried them through the blasted streets.  The Master tried to make out the stately columns rising against the orange sky that had existed for millennia.  But it was dark, and too thick with smoke.   If it wasn’t for the occasional landmark still providing a foggy outline, he wouldn’t have guessed the Angel set him in the right place.

That piece of living art blended in against an eviscerated library, scrolls and paper flying through the street.  He stood amidst other toppled statuary, in various states of shambles.

The angel looked somber; hands hung at his sides, blank eyes resting on a distant point.

_I’ve never seen it either_.

_Stay out of my head.  I can’t do this with someone else looking on.  I’ll call you when I’m ready to go.  Please._

When was the last time he asked, ‘please’?  It felt odd to think it.

He clutched his head scarf around his hair.  He wanted to tie a knot, but that would expose his face too much.  He pulled his dusty robes closer.

Then, he spotted his quarry.  A grizzled old soldier with a gun, using a building as cover while bolts of fire blasted past him.

He had never seen this man before but would know him anywhere.

His hearts hurt so much at the sight he thought they would stop.  Oh, he’d done it before for the hell of it, accosted the Doctor trying to move Missy into the vault, shortly after his friend had died on the colony ship.  It was a lark he hadn’t thought through before he did it, and, well, it wasn’t much fun by the end. 

He knew better this time.

He dodged the flickering beams of power to cross over to the old man.

“Are you mad!” the soldier berated him.  “What are doing out here?  Take cover!”

“You’re the Doctor.”  The Master adopted a higher tambre than his speaking voice, which his adolescent body facilitated very well.  He kept his head draped in cloth, tilted away.

“Not anymore.”

He wanted to roll his eyes.  And they labeled _him_ a drama queen.  He couldn’t resist poking it a little.

“What do your men call you?”

“Usually ‘Lord’, and I hate it.  But it’s better than a lie.”  He looked at the interloper.  “What in the name of the vortex is a Sister of Karn doing here?”

“I have a message.”  The Master had decided that this ruse his friend would most believe.

“The sisters broke with Gallifrey before the first shot was fired.”

“I’ve fled the Sisterhood.  No one knows I’m here.”

The shooting halted.  “Exterminate, exterminate” sounded in the distance but it was getting fainter as it moved away.  They were out of immediate danger.  The Doctor sat and leaned against the half-torn wall.  He pulled out a chewy bar of some sort and began to gnaw on it.  “Ration?”  He offered.

The faux Sister sat as well, giving a foot or so distance between them.

“No.”  Then, because his character would have added it: “Thank you.”

“So, why have you left the sisterhood to find me?”

“Can’t I tell you the message?”  He felt a little desperate.

“Not until I know who you are and why you need to talk to me so badly.”  The Doctor returned as he chewed.

The Master bowed his head, trusting the drapery to shield him.  Damn.  He couldn’t improvise.  If the Doctor saw through it, which he was perfectly capable of doing, then he’d probably pierce the disguise and ignore the message.  And he simply couldn’t.  The best option was to walk a tightrope kind of truth.

“I had a friend once.  He died.”

“I’m sorry.”  The soldier had obviously said those words, on this subject, too many times.

“It was my fault. He was where he was because of me.”

“He’s lucky to have you then.”  The reply was weary. “I have a friend who would count it a crowning achievement to plunge in the knife himself.”

The Master flinched.

“So, why are you here?  To atone?  Because you think the right deed makes up for it?”  The other’s inflection was contemptuous.

“What if I am?”

 “It won’t bring back the dead.”

“What if it happened to you?” The Master asked with stark honesty. “If your friend placed you in danger, and you died trying to save everyone.  What would you tell him, or her, if you could?  Anything?”

The Doctor’s stare seemed to penetrate the head cloth.  “You’re asking, would I forgive that person?”

“Yes.”

“Was it an accident?”

The Master forced himself to answer.  “Let’s say that it was accident you were there.  The situation you walked into…wasn’t.” 

 “Don’t you think, at some point, I’d run out of forgiveness?  You can only bend a friendship so far before it breaks.”

The pain prior to this was nothing compared to what his friend’s words elicited.  Perhaps he would die here, and that would be the end.

But the Doctor wasn’t done. “So, if it were me, the question I would ask is: how far did he bend our friendship for this foolishness?  _Should_ I forgive him?”

The Master went numb as if he’d swallowed poison.  Abruptly, he was angry.  With the Doctor, with himself. “No. you shouldn’t. All he’s done is hurt you.  He’s schemed and lied and murdered and burned until there was nothing left.  How many beings did you care about that he massacred?  How many of the few precious things you value did he destroy? You let him survive, time and again, only to watch him do it all over.  I don’t know how far friendship can bend, but it was twisted to a damn pretzel.”

There was a pause.

 “Despite all that, I know you’d forgive him.   I know you would.” He met the compassionate gaze head on.  “And I know how much you hate yourself because of it.”

“What are we talking about, exactly?”  The Doctor’s voice was mild.

The Master tried to regroup. “Listen, I came to give you a piece of information it is imperative you know.  That’s all.  There are decisions you must make, that will alter the world.”

“You still haven’t told me why.  Why _you_ , Sister?  Or, ex-Sister.”

“Don’t make me say it.” he said, no longer hiding behind anything. “You’ve never needed me to.”

The Doctor’s gaze was steadfast, and he held it a few beats.  “I told you about my friend who wants to kill me.  Between you and I, he’s never tried as hard as I know he could.  Neither have I.  I hold back, because there’s always hope as long as he does too.”

“If he breaks faith first, you’re dead,” the Master pointed out.

The Doctor gave a half smile.  “Oh, it’s a gamble.  But I like my odds.  We have a lot of history, and I’m in it for the long game.”

It was a few minutes before the Master was able to speak.

“I need to go,” he told the soldier around choking emotion.  “Now, can I say what I came for?”

“All right.”  The man shifted, readjusted his gun.

“I know what the High Council is planning.”  The Master said in a rush.  He then, in the bleakest terms, relayed to his friend everything he knew. 

“You can’t be serious.”  The soldier’s tone was flat.  “That’s monstrous, that’s insanity--”

“And Time Lords who sit on the Council are sane?”

“Even for them, that’s a new depth of abhorrent; it’s suicide, and they’re taking the universe with them.  How?  When does this start?”

 “Soon, I guess.  I don’t have the details.”

“But you seem to have a lot of other details,” observed the Doctor, giving his companion a sharp look.

The Doctor hadn’t been the only one to notice the players in that ballroom when Rassilon and his entourage arrived. 

“Look, you know at least one voice of reason there.  Why don’t you run it past her? Just casually ask: ‘Say, are you and your High Council cronies planning to blow up time and the universe and life as we know it?’  See what she says.  Might be fun.”

That got the soldier’s attention.  He stood one minute, two, staring at the Master.

“They take a _sacred oath_.  She won’t tell me anything.  And…she hasn’t seen me. In this body, I mean. I don’t want her to.”  The soldier moved his face into shadow, hiding his expression.

The Master’s head was spinning with smoke and distant weapon fire and the fact he was talking to his dead friend in an apocalyptic Arcadia.  It made him reckless. “Then she’ll recognize why you came, after avoiding her for so long.  You won’t have to say a word. There’s always a way around a “sacred oath”.”  He sarcastically mimed the air quotes. _I will look after this body for a thousand years…_

The Doctor stared, despondent, into the rubble around him.  Then he turned.

“Well, I know who you are now.”

The Master went dead still.

“You’re a hallucination.  I must have pieced it together, and now my own mind manifests a persuasive vision to force me to take the next step.”

The Master blinked in surprise.  “Sure.  Let’s go with that.”

“If you _were_ the person I want to see most in these end times when all my other friends and comrades are gone, when I am so…very…alone…the only reason you’d be here is to laugh at me, kill me, and then spit on my grave.”

The Master reddened, each word a razor slice.

“Because what you’ve said is what I always dreamed _he_ would. You’re who I wish he would be, who I want to believe he is at his core, standing right there.  The perfect balm for my last hours. You.  Beside me again.  I must’ve finally snapped.” The Doctor sounded a little hysterical.  “Even my imagination couldn’t come up with a true version I’d believe.  Hence the flimsy disguise. A male Sister of Karn!” his voice shook. Then he snorted in irony. “Really.”

“But what you said earlier, about your friend, about hope—”

“The vain yearning of a naïve fool. Fairy tales.”

The Master couldn’t leave it like this.  He reached across the distance and took the worn, wrinkled hand in his young one, which, he was annoyed to note, still had dimples around the knuckles like a child’s.

The warmth of his friend’s hand was like the sun rising over a frozen world.

He could only hold it for a minute.

“Think what you want.  You’re in no fit state.  You’re in the middle of a war and your own Lord President is set to destroy the universe and everything in it.  But, Doctor?”

“I’m not the Doctor.”

“Yes, you are,” the Master said with conviction.  “Shame on you, Doctor.  You know better.”

He released the hand.  It was one of the hardest things he had ever done. 

 “I have to go.”  He looked critically at his leather-faced friend.  “I’m really liking the beard.  It suits you.”

The Doctor wasn’t paying attention.  As the Master turned, he heard the pounding of gun fire against stone; an old soldier pushed too far, venting his fury.

_I’m ready_ , he told the waiting Angel.


	17. Chapter 17

He burst through his Tardis doors into a surgery suite packed with people.

The cheering was deafening, whole minutes went by before he could hear.

He was hugged by half a dozen well wishers before he could muster up any kind of defense.

“Hold on!”  He yelled above the din.  “What’s all the fuss?”

“You did it!” screamed a girl in the back.  “The colonists have returned.  They’re safe!”

The pandemonium ensued again.

He hadn’t bothered to fine tune the timing, so it was hours after he had left.  Enough for the colonists to return and his people to assume he was responsible.  When you’ve been abused by despots long enough, any act of philanthropy is a miracle.

He allowed himself a moment of satisfaction. 

So, this was what it was like to be loved.

Hated was reliable, hated always dispensed in a steady stream of fear.  You knew exactly what you were getting. But this was pretty good.  He might try it for a while, see how it went.  At least until he got too bored.

He led the impromptu victory parade into the street.  There might have been more mayhem and destruction than strictly necessary, old habits die hard.

He passed an ornamental fountain that stood in the city square.  He left that one alone. He showed a drunken celebrant how frightening he could be when she threw a brick at it.

It had a graceful marble angel in the center that didn’t used to be there.

When the dawn crept along the horizon, only a few knots of gaiety still carrying on, he passed it again.

The statue was gone.

**Author's Note:**

> Be sure to check out Missy's Vault and Colony Ship: Sequel to Missy's Vault for the whole of the Master's story. Also, my thoughts on all things Doctor Who (reboot), reviews, actors, behind the scenes and more at: https://maurinetritch.wordpress.com/


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